Feeds

Articles tagged with: airplane

On the Detroit to Atlanta part of my trip, the gogo wireless on the airplane it was $4.95 for the whole flight, but they offered 15 minutes for only $1.95.

I didn’t think that was too bad of a price, so I thought I might do it on the next leg of the trip. But they didn’t offer that option later on. Actually, it’s was only $4.95 for the whole flight (both flights) and I didn’t think that was too bad either. Didn’t airplane internet access originally start off at $10 or $15?

There were some services you could access like movie rentals and shopping. It also looked like it was set up for flight tracking, but that didn’t seem to be working. It knew where we were heading, how hight we were and how fast we were going (500+ miles/hour).

I believe this was yesterday that an Air France Airbus A380-800 (F-HPJD) clipped a Comair Bombardier CRJ-700 (N641CA) at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. I don’t think anyone was hurt, but still…

I’m not sure what kind of playback unit this is, probably digital, but it doesn’t look like it. The screen was only about 4 or 5 inches diagonal and had some kind of touchscreen interface. It looked like it was ancient and belonged in a rack in an old TV studio.

Now while I’m picking on it, I do realize this was probably pretty cool technology when it came out. But these days the could probably just be using a $200 iPod touch for it. That’s probably 15 pounds they’re not flying around for hundreds of thousands of miles a year (a month?). And while they’re at it, ditch these old TV monitors (that weigh a ton) and put in some cheap LCD screens that barely weigh anything…

Wow!!! I was just looking outside the airplane window and and there in the sky were contrails from another plane that must have flown by recently. It looked very cool and I had never seen any from the air before. I hope the pictures came out okay! Yes, I know it doesn’t take much to excite me :)

Contrails are the cloudy streaks that an airplane sometimes leaves behind in the sky, right? That’s what I saw, even if I got the name wrong.On a side note – I need a good dictionary for my MacBook that doesn’t need me to be on-line to use it. Just a big PDF would work fine. Anyone know of anything semi-recent in the public domain or something? Or if I can purchase one somewhere? Something old enough to have copyright expired probably would not have “contrails” in it…

So the first thing I head this morning as the alarm went off was all about the icy roads in the Detroit area. Specifically between me and the airport. Not a good sign, especially since I didn’t have that much extra time allocated since it was a morning flight and I didn’t know about the weather before had. But all was fine, a little slow on the roads but I got the airport fine. The airport was dead, I’ve never seen it so quiet there.

Got checked in, got me a morning McSandwich and got to my terminal with just a few minutes to spare. Someone took the seat next to mine so I moved to the back row, no reclining but i’ll live. I’ve got an empty spot next to me, an adorable little 8 month old boy on his Mom’s lap that I was pretty excited about, he had been pretty friendly the few times I had run into him. I thought he was going to be a lot of fun but he passed out a few minutes into the flight (boring!).

It’s beautiful up here in the clouds. We’re just above them and the sun is lighting them up perfectly. Looks like snow, maybe more of how I’d picture it in Antarctica (or some other vast snowy land). My cell phone photos just don’t do it justice at all; should have pulled out the real camera.

Bonus! They just brought us a bowl of cereal (Total) and a banana, don’t know if I’ve ever gotten that for a non-international flight. I’m a much happier flyer if I’m snacking and staying hydrated, it really makes the flight more comfortable for me. On a side note, I can’t believe the number of people drinking mixed drinks already!

I can’t believe how empty this plane is! It’s the plane from Costa Rica to Atlanta. I had an emergency row seat with a little more legroom (but it’s got the funky trays and they seats don’t recline), so I ended up moving and have a whole row to myself. I put up the armrests and stretched out, that’s enough legroom for me!

Now if I only had kept that old pillow that I brought with me and discarded back in Costa Rica…

So for the second leg I didn’t get an aisle seat, but no one sat in the middle seat so I had lots of room. I got to watch the clouds for a while, but they weren’t as smooth and flat where they look solid, just lots of lumpy fluffy ones.

I think airline food has gotten better the last few years, my chicken and rice was delicious and even the carrots were good. I got to read a little bit, a sci-fi paperback called Manifold Time by Stephen Baxter, I’m liking it so far but I’m not very far into it. I plan to leave it behind and I forgot my BookCrossing labels.

The Atlanta airport was nice, I don’t think I’ve ever been there when I wasn’t running for a connecting flight. We got in early so I had some time to look around (and get my last McDonald’s food for a while). I even had time to switch my seat (from a middle one) and to sign up for frequent flyer miles, I couldn’t find my Delta number anywhere, and they made it sound like I could claim old miles too and I know where my last ticket is (when I flew to NY via Atlanta).

Also, last night was Monday, my big TV night, so I threw a few of those shows in my laptop and got to watch Chuck and Journeyman. That really makes the time go by…

So while I’m never thrilled to get up at 4 am, it’ll be nice to arrive at my destination in the early afternoon. But the best part is that right now we’re up above the clouds and the sky is all orange in the distance.

I used to love looking at the clouds when I flew and thought I’d never tire of them. These days of bringing all my stuff on the flight to entertain myself, getting an aisle seat generally outweighs the window option.

So the clouds all look like now or water out thee, i’d love to skydive through it sometime to just see how it feels, it all looks so solid. It’s such a bright orange and red and pink off in the distance and the lights kinda coming from below it almost looks as if the slow in the distance is on fire.

Later – It’s mostly up now, but there’s still this burning orange in the distance and the color of the clouds has this icy blue look to it in the light. Out the opposite side of the plane it still looks dark and you can see the cities lit up.

More later – Now it’s got that normal icy/snowy look to it that I’m used to seeing when I fly at a reasonable hour :)

So the EgyptAir flight from JFK to Cairo took off way late, we sat in line on the tarmac for a long time (about an hour?). The really cool part is the had a camera up from and they pumped the picture to the TVs in the plane so you could watch the take off as if you were up front. Not too bad so far but I’m about ready for a nap. Dinner was salmon (bleh!) they were out of beef :(

I’ve got a few movies and TV shows I brought along so I’ve been catching up on those. Plus, I finished the new Alex Rider novel Ark Angel which Target accidentally put on the shelves a few days early so I was excited to buy that for the trip the night before I left.

It was a really long flight and I couldn’t sleep at all, I finally got about 90 minutes sleep and woke up with about 90 minutes until we land. But when combine this with the fact I’ve been on the go for about 24 hours and only had about 4 hours sleep to start I’m really thankful for the 90 minutes sleep…